


There's Blood In The Water

by loversandantiheroes



Category: The Secret World
Genre: A Baby Bee's First Death, Allusions to Backstory, Bees as An Exposition Delivery Method, Draug, Drowning, Gen, Horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-22
Updated: 2020-10-22
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:54:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27145523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loversandantiheroes/pseuds/loversandantiheroes
Summary: The first death of Alice "Liesey" Delacoeur.  Originally posted on Tumblr back in 2016 in answer to the prompt "Your agent is afraid of something / Your agent dies for the first time."
Kudos: 4





	There's Blood In The Water

_ Not in the water. Oh sweet Lord please not in the water. _

Liesey planted her foot in the gurgling draug’s chest and pushed as hard as she could, trying to wrench herself away as the thing pulled her closer and closer to the concrete drop of the pier by a slimy fistful of her shirt. She threw herself backward, twisting, not screaming but breathless. The smell of it was unbearable, like a dead, bloated thing that washed ashore and burst open. Like rot and floodwater; like a city drowned and dead. She teetered, balanced for an impossible second on the edge of one bootheel, and then her shirt gave way, tearing at the armpits and leaving the flabby thing with only a slimed scrap of white cotton. The thing grunted, drooling rank seawater and raised an arm that ended not in a hand but a malformed mass of barnacles, swinging it around in a blindingly fast arc that barely missed Liesey’s face as she fell back.

_ Not in the water _ , she thought again, scrabbling backward on her elbows and heels over concrete and coils of rope and broken lobster traps. Panic whited out her thoughts until that was all that was left, keening endlessly through static like a horrible EAS screech.  _ Not in the water not in the water not in the water not in the water not in the water- _

The thing let out a bubbling roar and lurched after her, hand outstretched. Gasping, Liesey rolled onto her hands and knees, meaning to launch herself onto her feet and run, and stopped dead.

A little girl stood in front of her, quiet and still in a soaked summer dress. Her dark brown eyes were glazed over, her skin like wood ash. Her hair had been twisted into neat little knots and fastened with the rubber bands with the big plastic beads, only one had broken, the knot lank and unraveling. Beneath it, the side of her head was deeply dented. The water had washed away the blood, but the wound remained. The girl regarded Liesey, clutching a ruined plush alligator, her mouth moving silently.

Liesey screamed then, not in fear but in pain as the draug brought its club-arm down on the small of her back, her spine crunching under the blow like eggshells and severing her spinal cord. The club-arm whistled down again, hard and fast as a wrecking ball. Blood and bile flooded her mouth, making her choke. The thing seized Liesey by an ankle, seemingly satisfied, and began to drag her down the ramp toward the shore. She scrabbled vainly for purchase, her legs useless but her arms flailing, tearing nails on concrete and then grabbing fistfuls of rocky sand and seaweed, trailing a winding ribbon of blood.

The little girl followed, a dead witness to the dying.

“Help me,” Liesey choked.

_ Help me _ , the little girl mouthed back. The girl wavered faintly, and then the whole world wavered. The water was up to her chest before Liesey could feel it, so cold it took her breath. She reached toward the little girl, desperate. Greasy sunlight glinted off the girl’s St. Christopher medal like wisp light. She raised a small water-smoothed hand in a sad wave as Liesey slipped beneath the surface and disappeared.

⁂

_ For a time, there is only darkness, comforting and still. She drifts in amniotic blackness, wondering in only the most remote, abstract form if she has returned to the womb; spontaneous reincarnation. But then the light grows, harsh and grey and she resists, twisting away because it is too bright and it hurts it hurts it  _ hurts -

\- can you hear us, sweetling?

_ Not floating now, not drifting, but falling like a brittle autumn leaf. Touching down on earth that does not quite feel solid enough. Sand that doesn’t take her weight right, her knees barely disturb the grains. Divots wind up the beach away from her, splattered black. The world is empty. No people. No draug. No sound but for the buzzing in her ears. No color. The black, she realizes then, is her own blood. The buzzing swells and she flinches. _

\- hear us sweetling, you must you must hear us.

_ A glint of gold before her eyes. The buzzing deepens. A bee turns impossibly slow cartwheels in front of her, trailing golden light like pollen. Another joins it, then another, their acrobatics forming a flickering ball of light. The light grows, pulses, solidifies? A tiny piece of honeycomb. _

\- our wisdom flows so sweet. taste and see.

_ She breathes deep a scent of blood and honey-sweet, and takes the honeycomb. _

\- out of the eater came forth meat; out of the strong came forth sweetness. we see you, sweetling. can you see us? do not try. your three-dimensional brain can only process so much. do not see us. instead you must see them.

_ Shadows line the coast like smoke, swirling, making figures. So many figures. They stretch out beyond the limits of her vision in this place, along the beach onto the pier, the streets beyond. Thousands of pale eyes all fixed on her. And at the forefront, the little girl with the stuffed alligator. _

\- WITNESS. you must, for no one else will. no one else can, sweetling. it is our fault, in part. initiate the gemini frequency. twin girls, a flicker of anima already within you, how could we resist? we found you and stoked the flame, turned embers into bonfires. there was always a chance of disaster. the sisters fought and then the storm came, an accident of energies, an outpouring of anima. the townspeople caught in the storm surge. over eight-thousand people in Brumeux Anse. less than a hundred escape with their lives, and the dead do not escape at all. once upon a time there was a little girl who could see ghosts who grew up to be a woman who made ghosts. they should not be, sweetling. you feel their weight on you with every step.

_ The little girl steps forward, fiddling with the medal at her throat. _

\- they saw you. you could always see the dead and now they look back on you with eyes like mirrors. you shine so bright, sweetling. you are a bonfire, a beacon. they follow you like moths because you are all they can see. they are blinded by you and cannot see another path. but in this state, for a moment, the currents still. the fire dims. and the moths, perhaps, can fly away.

_ The girl leans down, peering quizzically into Liesey’s face. Tendrils of that same pollen-light drift from her skin up to the girl, a lingering posthumous charge of anima. The change is sudden, the haze in her eyes clearing, the color creeping into them and into her skin, the cleft in her skull knitting until there is only the loose unkemptness of her hair to signal anything was ever amiss. Her mouth moves again, and this time her voice accompanies it.  _ Kendra Franklin _ , she says, fingers tapping her chest. _

_ Liesey nods _ . Kendra Franklin,  _ she repeats. _

_ Kendra nods, seizing Liesey’s hand in her own, tiny and warm and for this moment real. She slips the medal off her head and drops it into Liesey’s upturned palm, closing her fingers around it.  _ Remember,  _ she says _ .

_ A new light shines, a soft halo that grows around Kendra until she is nothing but a brilliant outline of a girl. For a second, Liesey smells morning air and fresh biscuits and hears a trailing of voices _ (Kendra, where you been my sweet? Come here and let your gramma take a look at you!)  _ and then the light goes out. _

_ The throng remains, and Liesey’s heart sinks. There are still so many. _

\- no, sweetling. one is enough for now. to release more would take too much from you, and we might not be able to bring you back. you would be left to flicker in the dark with the moths, looking for another fire. there is too much at stake. we cannot let you.

Why me?,  _ she cries,  _ Why bring me back and not them?

\- we cannot give them life, sweetling. the spark is gone and cannot be kindled. there is yet something to kindle within you. an anima-spark. you will not go out so easily. you must not. you cannot.

_ There is a sound like a whip cracking in slow motion and light flares again, a great weight on her incorporeal body, like being thrown from one plane to the next, crashing down hard into her physical body brightness and light and pain - _

⁂

Liesey floundered out of the shallows, retching water and gasping as someone hauled her ashore.

“Ayuh, that’s alright girl. Get all that nasty right on out.” Norma Creed turned her over, pounding her on the back.

The world spun lazily. Liesey tried to push herself up, sense telling her that what had killed her once might still be around to try to kill her again, and dropped sharply to her hands and knees. Liesey hitched in a breath, coughed, and retched again.

“Just take it easy for a minute,” Norma said. “I got you covered.” She pulled her shotgun out of her belt and tapped it against a grey-green lump beside her. Blinking away tears and saltwater, Liesey saw the remains of a draug, a tattered scrap of white cotton blouse stuck to the slime of its hand. Half of its head had been blown off.

“Thank-”, Liesey croaked, losing the rest in a new coughing fit.

Norma slapped her on the back again. “Don’t mention it, kiddo. You might consider some better self-defense tools, though. I’m not always gonna be here to save your hide, y’know. Oh, hello -” Norma stuck the shotgun back into her belt, and began rummaging through the sand at her feet.

Again Liesey pushed herself up, slower this time, and finally she made it unsteadily to her feet. Without a word, Norma slung one of Liesey’s arms around her shoulder. She held up her free hand, a silver St. Christopher’s medal dangling from it. “This yours?”

Liesey nodded dumbly, taking the necklace from Norma and slipping it over her head.

“Gift,” she whispered harshly. “Kendra Franklin.”

“That’s nice, dear,” Norma said, hauling her up the ramp towards the street. “Now let’s get you in somewhere with a few less monsters and maybe a few more doctors.”

“Wrong island for that,” Liesey wheezed.

“Don’t I know it,” Norma said.


End file.
